Major Changes In the Wii Scene

First off, I would like to apologize for neglecting the Wiibrew site. With this in mind, it's time to fill the news page as a lot has happened.

Up first is the D2Ckey.

From www.metriodmods.com

There was a time when all those with the dreaded D2C chipset mourned over the fact they were unable to play backups or use GC homebrew. This all changed Oct. 10th with the release of the D2Ckey. With a simple 31 wire install your D2C Wii is now unlocked. You can find more information at http://www.d2ckey.com

Next big thing in the Wii scene was the dump of a demo kiosk copy of Super Mario Galaxy. The whole Wii community was left scrambling when a new "modchip detecting" protection was found. In reality, the game was not detecting chips, rather required a new patching method that current chips could not provide. While D2Ckey chipped Wii's were safe with their 31 wire installs, Cyclowiz, Wiikey, Wiinja, and open source chips were left in the dust. Since then all retail chips have seen updates to address this problem. Links to these updates will be posted in the download list.

Prompted by the SMG issue, the modchip scene has thinned out. The only retail modchips with apparent continuing customer support are the big 3: Cyclowiz, Wiikey, and Wiinja. None of the other 'retail' chips have yet to come back into the scene with an update. On a sad note, the open source scene has just met the end of one of the best open source chips, Wiifree. YAOSM has been handed the torch, which they have definitely earned, and is now at the forefront of the open source scene right along OpenWii which both have updates for the SMG problem.

So, just to reiterate, the only chips working with SMG are:

D2Ckey

Wiikey

Cyclowiz

Wiinja

Datel Drive Doctor

OpenWii

YAOSM

The Wii Scene is now balanced with working mods for all versions of the Wii on the market. How long will this peace last? Only time will tell.

Sonic The Hedghog Speeds
Up For Brawl!

Despite my last article which had turned out to be a bad sign and had created more disappointing fans, this is no joke, from all the glory we have been imagining, of all the rumors we've been hoping for it to be true, the dream has finally come true.

Our favorite classical Sega character is now officially playable in the upcoming Wii hit title Super Smash Bros: Brawl.

Here is Sonic's appearance of the upcoming game.

Camy Pro Gear Hero Pack.

The Nunchuck fits in the handle on the backside

of the shield and the Wiimote connects straight onto the sword.

This is how it works.

Federal Angents Serve 32 Search Warrants Aimed at Modchip Retailers

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from 22 offices assisted by representatives of the electronic industry today executed 32 federal search warrants in 16 states as part of an investigation into the alleged sale and distribution of illegal modification chips and disc copyright circumvention devices. This investigation represents the largest national enforcement action of its kind targeting this type of illegal activity.

The search warrants were executed at businesses, storefronts, and residences located in California, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin at locations associated with subjects who are allegedly involved in the direct importation, installation, sale, and distribution of the devices that are of foreign manufacture and smuggled into the United States.

The modification chips and circumvention devices allow users to play illegally obtained, pirated and/or counterfeit software on video game consoles including Sony's Playstation 2, Microsoft's XBOX and XBOX 360, and Nintendo's Wii. Modification chips and swap discs for gaming consoles violate laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the makers of the gaming consoles, game developers, and others in the industry have incurred billions of dollars in losses worldwide due to sales lost to those selling counterfeit and pirated video games.

Full story can be found here.

Examples of chips siezed (including Wiinja, Wiikey, and Cyclowiz) can be found here.

WiiBoss Releases August 3rd

Another modchip supporting open source code will be releasing soon. This set also includes a programmer for those of you who also want programmed PICs on hand. From the WiiBoss site :

Wii-BOSS! The world first fully upgradeable internal modchip for the Nintendo Wii.

“Almost all other conventional and homebrew modchips consist of two parts where the code is held, of which only the smaller EEPROM section of the chip can be changed easily. This EEPROM part of the code is very useful for small pre defined simple on or off selectable 1’s and 0’s and possibly a very small “additional feature” section. For example: Speed setting your chip or enabling multi-zone. However, if you want to update the entire chip, you need to physically remove the chip from the Wii, put it on a programmer, reprogram it, and then reinstall the chip into the Wii. This is not something you want to be doing constantly keep up with new optimized modchip codes for the Nintendo Wii.”

• The Wii-Boss is designed as a ‘quick solder’ chip with an external ribbon cable that can be left inside the machine, taped down on the back of the Wii, or even hidden inside the memory card bay. This chip can be fully programmed inside the machine with any code that supports the 12f629 PIC Microchip.

• The Wii-Boss is also designed to allow external booting off the ribbon cable, therefore protecting the user against ever having to pull the Wii apart ever again if their requirements for a particular style of modchip change. External adapters to make competitor modchips and PC applications like DVD-Tool boot externally have already been designed and will be produced soon after the initial release of the premier product for a very minimal charge. These will likely be included in future kits at no extra charge.

• The Wii-boss even comes packaged with its own RS-232 port external programmer. Software for the programmer is open source and therefore also provided free. The programmer is based on an open source project and therefore could be ‘modded’, theoretically, to be used as a standard RS-232 PIC programmer.

• R.R.P. for the entire packed is USD$25 including the Wii-SP JDM programmer. The cost will obviously much cheaper in bulk quantities. Wholesale quantities start from just 2 kits.

At the time of writing the wii-boss supported the following codes (in no particular order):

Wii-Free - last stable release ver2.45

YOASM - last stable release ver1.7

Winja – last stable release ver2.0 (deluxe currently not available)

Open-Wii - last stable release ver1.3

Wii-skas - last stable release unknown

MaxBoot - last stable release ver1.0 (redirection code for external booting)

Cyclowiz v 3.5 Official Firmware Released

The Cyclowiz chip always supported dual layer media, that is up until version 3.0 of their firmware. The 3.0 version of their firmware broke this compatability, but 3.5 is here to put it back! There will be some slight tweaking required to fully support DL media. You can find more information at the official site.

Download here:

NTSC-U

NTSC-J

PAL

Lego Indiana Jones Video Game Coming Soon

One of the best masterpieces throughout the history is finally

returning in Lego Form. Brought to you by LucasArts who made

the humerous game Lego Star Wars. No news or announcements

on which platforms, but the possibilities for the Wii still stays

strong.

Cyclowiz Now Supporting Unofficial Firmwares

Straight from the horse's mouth…

"Six months ago, in a quasi-simultaneous launch, the two first Wii modchips were released, one of them being CycloWiz. It was already ahead of the competition, as it was the only upgradable modchip available then. Since then, we've been working hard in order to make sure CycloWiz stays the best in terms of quality, features and support.

Within six months, many things have changed, and one of the best evolutions is the creation of open-source modchip projects. While, as of today, they currently lack many features that commercial chips support (such as audiofix, DVD upgrade support (with the notable exception of OpenWii on ATmega), compatibility with old GC Multi-Disc games), it's surely a very interesting and promising aspect of the Wii modding scene that shouldn't be ignored.

When you buy a new PC, you want it to be able to run Windows and Linux, even if you plan to use only one of the two OS at first. Why shouldn't you have this freedom with the modchip you buy? Today, we're opening up the CycloWiz platform to open-source firmwares, and we want that to be very user-friendly, with the possibility of upgrading from/to any of the firmwares using DVD upgrades. There's no need to change your firmware today, this feature only concerns a few people for now, mainly developers, but it might become very useful in the future.

There are currently two major open-source projects, Wiifree and OpenWii. Wiifree is clearly the most popular, but OpenWii gained some attention lately as it became upgradable on one architecture. We decided to start by supporting Wiifree. A beta port of version 2.45 was uploaded in our forums. It features all the Wiifree features plus DVD upgrade support and chip disable support.

Technically this is possible because CycloWiz is a fully upgradable modchip. Many other modchips said to be upgradable are only partially upgradable, meaning that the modchip's program's data can be reprogrammed, but the program itself can't. Radically changing the firmware on partially upgradable modchip is out of the question.

Now what about an official upgrade? We won't drop support for official firmwares. In fact, we're working hard on the next version. One of the main challenge is to add support for D2C chipset. We won't tell you like another team that we're "almost done". It is a real challenge. To get technical, the Gamecube drive had two backdoors that could be used to run modchip code. Those two backdoors were also found on the Wii chipsets, and a new one was even added. Unfortunately, all three were removed on the new D2C chipset. Well, kinda There is clearly a way in, but a lot of work is still needed. Of course, we'll keep you updated in case anything exciting happens!"

Download it here: Cyclowiz Wiifree v2.45beta

CycloWiz PC Flasher v1.0 beta Released

Team Cyclops has released a new tool to upgrade your Cyclowiz chips. If you don't want to use a DVD, or can't because of a bad flash, you can now use this new tool and a homemade cable to wire up your Wii to reflash/upgrade your Cyclowiz. This cable is the same cable used for the WABmodcheap mod, except things might be different on the Wii end. For support visit the Team Cyclops forums .

From their forums:

"We've been asked several times about the possibility of flashing the CycloWiz from PC. Mainly for two reason: to recover from a bad flash, or to use CycloWiz V1 on a D2B console. It is now possible!
The application requires a dvdtool parallel port cable that is very easy to build, but soldering skills are needed anyway.
It is currently in beta stage but has been successfully tested on different drives and with Windows Vista and XP."

Download the tool and manual here: CycloWiz PC Flasher v1.0 beta

WiiC To Release a Keyboard Interface Chip

The same company that produced the Wiic modchip will be producing a chip with a PS/2 port. This should allow the use of a keyboard as well as other devices that Wiic programs the chip to use. Although this may sound useful, my guess is that the keyboard might not be able to run in Wii mode. If this were true, then the keyboard would not be able to be used for the web broswer. You can check out the official site at www.wiickeyboard.com , but as of now there is not too much information posted.